Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will arrive in Indonesia this week as part of her first official visit to Asia in her new role. Many analysts argue that her visit to Indonesia indicates the significance of Indonesia in US foreign policy.

However, how should we look at this visit from the point of view of our national interests?

One of the important issues that will be addressed by Secretary Clinton is the possibility of revising the US foreign policy approach to Muslim global issues. Indonesia, as the country with the largest Muslim population, is indeed significant for the United States in restoring its image to the Muslim world.

During the Bush administration, the image of the United States was at its worst due to the fact that former President Bush tended to mobilize his hard power instruments in dealing with the Muslim world.

Several polls have shown an increasingly anti-American trend in most Muslim countries. Suspicion and antipathy toward US foreign policy in the Middle East, including the decision to attack Iraq, Afghanistan and the US campaign on the war on terror has caused relations between the United States and the Muslim world to deteriorate to its lowest level, creating a deepening tension.

How crucial are the impacts of these worsening relations and what are the challenges facing the Obama administration?

The first challenge President Obama's new administration will have to face is a power shift at the global level. The post 9/11 era has diminished the power of state-centered political and military rivalry to dominate international relations. On the other hand, many non-state actors are now showing more significant global influence.

There is a process of reconfiguring power through which international security relationships are channeled; as part of this process, the revival of political Islam has become a significant ideological force in the Third World, particularly in the Muslim world.

The revival of political Islam is aimed at what the Islamists perceive as the global conspiracy against Islam both as a religion and a culture.

Hassan Hanafi, a distinguished Egyptian Islamist scholar, has described globalization as the "new colonialism"; the revival of political Islam is also a reaction towards the modern Western-style - or American - capitalist development.

The second challenge will be at the state level. For the past several decades, the United States has been a strong supporter of the status quo of autocratic regimes in many Muslim countries, and yet has become the enemy of democratic regimes in Muslim countries such as Iran. While we saw a significant global movement toward freedom and democracy in the last decade, the United States still maintained its traditional allies - authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world.

As a result, the United States is seen as the guardian of oppressive regimes. Thus, there is a strong perception that the US foreign policy does adopt a separate standard for the Muslim world when it comes to the advocacy of values such as human rights and democracy.

The next challenge to US foreign policy - which is related to the first and second challenges - will be the concept of establishing civil society in the Muslim world. The idea is crucial as it offers alternatives to autocratic rule and religious radicalism.

In this context, the United States must determine how to assist local groups working toward democratization without turning them into its agents.

US policy toward the Muslim world has tended to be incrementalist, a prudent approach that stemmed from a variety of considerations.

First, the United States did not want to appear explicitly hostile toward political Islam, which it believed would threaten its global interests.

Second, it was reluctant to give open political support to any Muslim country, whether moderate or radical, so as to maintain a global balance of power.

Third, skepticism prevailed among US foreign policy makers on the compatibility between political Islam and democratic values as perceived by the United States.

These considerations clearly show that there is a wide gap between the United States' official rhetoric and its actions. This is mainly because the Muslim world is not monolithic, so the United States has no "one size fits all" policy for the Muslim world.

In other words, the Western world - that is, the United States - lacks a comprehensive strategy to deal with the Muslim world, largely determining their positions and policies on the particular conditions of each Muslim state.

The US involvement with the Muslim world, particularly in the Middle East, has been inconsistent, mainly due to a complex interplay of historical, cultural, religious and political factors that cause many difficulties in managing a "healthy" relationship.

These are some of the crucial challenges that Secretary Clinton should address in order to restore the image of the United States and particularly in an effort to strengthen ties and take the United States-Indonesia bilateral relationship to a higher level.

The writer is vice rector for Relations and Cooperation at Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung. The opinions expressed are personal

Popular

Why Indonesia must write ASEAN’s green rules

Freeport Indonesia pushes back full copper mine restart

Growth without gain: Why Indonesians don't feel the economy